"A Committee of Correspondence"

12 January 2017

"Reconstruction of devastated eastern Aleppo begins" AMN

"Rebuilding in devastated parts of eastern Aleppo has begun now that the entirety of the city has been purged of terrorist groups.

A video released on Wednesday shows tractors and forklifts in the Saif al-Dawla district clearing the streets of sandbags and rubble amid efforts to help civilians return to normal life to eastern Aleppo, which had been under militant control since 2012, PressTV reported.

A mobile hospital in eastern Aleppo has also been established by Russian rescue workers.

“At the moment two tents are deployed: surgical and therapeutic and paediatric. At the moment about 100 people got assistance, we plan to provide help to 100 more,” said Ruslan Guzeev, head of the Russian medical department of special purpose.

Workers have begun returning to factories with Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis stating that the return of Aleppo's industrial capacities being a top priority." AMN News

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IMO this place will be rapidly re-built. The Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans, etc. will pour money into a myriad of projects.

Out in the eastern desert the SAA and friends are pushing IS back from around Tiyas air base. NW of Damascus the water supply is going to be turned back on soon as the springs are liberated from the jihadis. The SAA are making noises about an offensive toward Quneitra. I don't understand why. The jihadis there have full Israeli support and the population is much reduced because of the nearby Israeli threat and their long ago destruction of the city of Quneitra.

TTG and I remain committed to the thought that the main threat to the long term viability of the Syrian Government is continued jihadi possession of and now consolidation in Idlib Province. We can only hope that the R+6 alliance is waiting for a visible result from the coming Astana negotiation before deciding on a decisive campaign. pl

Most of the rebel "hospitals" were makeshift clinics in residential buildings that were used to treat the jihadists and their families. Most of the residents of East Aleppo were denied medical care and rescue services by the White Helmets who all decided they wanted to be evacuated with their jihadist mates to Idlib after torching the fire and other vehicles they'd hijacked from the regular fire service in Aleppo rather than stay in Aleppo to assist the public as they claim to do. The rebel hospitals were never declared or marked as such and were frequently used by the terrorists for other purposes, and thus were not protected buildings under the Geneva Conventions.
Al Kindi hospital in Aleppo was destroyed by two large SVBIED early on in the occupation and other real hospitals such as the Aleppo National and the National Eye Hospitals were used by the jihadists as bases since they were unlikely to be attacked.
There are a number of hospitals in West Aleppo that are still standing and providing medical care to civilians despite the best efforts of the terrorists to destroy them with Hell Cannon. These were declared and marked as hospitals and seem not to have been used for other purposes by the SAA, so they were protected buildings under the Geneva Convention and the terrorists and anyone who supported them is a war criminal.http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-aleppo-hospital-smokescreen-covering-up-al-qaeda-massacres-in-syria-once-again/5524250

Having served at a field hospital unit I would prefer to use the inflatable tents rather than some dirty building. If I could I would erect them inside a large hall, such as a gym, but that may be needed for other uses.

I've seen several mentions, including an Al Masdar article, noting a major build up of SAA around the Kuweires Airbase. AMN reports "large convoys of tanks, armored vehicles and MLRS systems" are moving into the area. An impending offensive is expected towards Dier Hafer or the villages near al-Bab. The ultimate goal may be Tabqah Airbase. The YPG/SDF has reached the road to Tabqah just north of the dam.

I wonder if Russia and Turkey have reached an understanding that would prevent the jihadis from consolidating effectively in Idlib? Maybe Turkey is slow rolling the scumbags. CENTCOM airstrikes are targeting unicorn leadership in the area. Some say we're trying to destroy the evidence of our jihadi collusion before the 20th.

Idlib maybe the main area of terrorist control but it's also where the terrorists who will not accept or are not acceptable for amnesty are offered as the only site for relocation. Until all the reconciliation efforts are complete and all jihadists are sent to Idlib it makes little sense to attack it. But then....

BTW, the Angry Arab has posted a comment on the SOHR which might be of interest - it seems they've stopped classifying Syrian non-deserter rebels as civilians although the number of male civilian dead (8,877) does seem rather high compared with the number of female civilian dead(1,855).We are also told that the Syrian army has collapsed and it is now mainly foreign “sectarian” militias doing the fighting for the regime side, while the opposition remains mainly Syrian.
Not so. According to SOHR statistics more than 90% of regime fatalities last year were Syrians (either army or domestic militia), while only 9% were non-Syrians, and that includes Palestinians. Only 1% regime side fatalities 2016 belonged to Hizballah.http://angryarab.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/in-defense-of-syrian-observatory-about.html
The discrepancy seen in Aleppo for Nov 15 - Dec 15 seems greater:442 civilians including 47 children and 25 women killed by aerial bombardment and barrel bombs targeted the eastern neighborhoods.
398 rebels killed by bombardment and clashes in eastern Aleppo including 10 commanders.
130 civilians including 40 children and 10 women in addition to an old man killed by shells targeted the western section of Aleppo.
I suspect the rebels over-reported the real civilian dead in East Aleppo by more than 200 giving about 600 rebel dead in that periodhttp://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=56903
The author of the comment is not saying that the SOHR figures are accurate but that the information they contain is better than the garbage in western MSM.

Advancing east through Deir Hafer towards the west bank of Lake Assad would not only cut the al-Bab region off from Da'esh heartland around Raqqa, but could also secure a major take-off point for Aleppo's water supply. After the Damascus experience with Wadi Barada, this may be a significant consideration.

Whether the SAA wants to make life easier for Turkish and other forces trying to take Al-Bab from Da'esh by cutting Da'esh's last remaining route to Raqqa is another issue.

Col., Mattis seemed to me to be in general genuinely anti-Russia, but Tillerson gave the impression he was reluctantly going along to get along. A lot of qualifications and hedging from him at his confirmation hearing.

One hopes Trump has the fortitude to overrule the Mattis line, and to resist the deepstate's efforts to make cooperation impossible with the Russian hackers narrative.

Has anything been seen of the vaunted U.N. aid effort since East Aleppo was re-taken. As I recall, there was much wailing and bemoaning over the inability of the U.N. to move aid into the eastern part of the city because of the siege.

I agree. But to MSM, jihadis are not just jihadis; in Syria, so they tell me, it's a mixed bag with different flavors and shades of jihadi, and -- if you'll pardon the glib analogy -- the IS jihadis are the black licorice flavor, the face of absolute evil. This has made for a useful contrast for the Nusra/Sham jihadis, on whose behalf there's been a massive PR campaign, e.g. the Vice features on the White Helmets, Ken Roth (head of HRW) urging a "humanitarian" intervention against Assad in Aleppo; even in left-wing press, critics of the rebels have been called "Orientalists".

Under these equivocated conditions, the Israelis received little flak for assisting Nusra in the Golan, which was reported back in Dec 2014 (first by Vice I believe).

If, however, there was evidence that Nusra/Sham and ISIS are not so organizationally distinct from each other -- and, as far as i know, that evidence has not been presented to the public -- then I imagine there's a lot of people who could be in a lot of trouble.

I only voted for Trump to keep the Evil Clinton out of office. Voting "for" Trump was the most effective way I could use my vote against Clinton.
Trump is certainly very shrewd and cunning. But he still seems to me like a kind of idiot-savant who is savant at his little corner of bussiness and savant at inspiring a mass following and getting elected. But idiot at understanding those aspects of history, culture, society, politics, military affairs and etc. which are discussed here at SST. I don't think he can even grasp the differences in what his various picks believe and how they will effect what he eventually decides will be his policy.

I'm sure if Trump were reading this comment he would say: " Ha! if you're so smart, why aren't you rich like me? How come I'm the President and you're not?" And I don't have an answer which would impress him the least little bit. And that's okay.

I hope Sessions doesn't derail the whole Trump Administration by riding his little hobbyhorse of War On Marijuana 2.0. That would earn vast reserves of hatred for the Trump Administration in states which went for Trump like Michigan ( and, I believe, Colorado) and others. Will Trump be minimally smart enough to jerk Sessions's choke-chain hard enough to get Sessions directed to Illegal Immigration and other important things? I hope so.

IMO, all jihadis want the same things; 1 - to establish a sharia law state which establishes Hanbali based law codes and in line with this would severely restrict the activities and liberties of other "people of the book," and which will treat people who are not "people of the book" as heathen (wothnyeen) and mere chattels. IMO this has been richly demonstrated in both Syria and Iraq with regard to all "stripes" of jihadis. 2 - To retain power by any means necessary once they have achieced it. In their collective view God is not a democrat. The denigration of the term "Orientalism" is stupid. The notion that Islamicate Culture is not at the root of jihadism is social science based nonsense. The Salafist jihadi efforts to achieve power and fight the West is specifically based on their understanding of the nature of Islam. pl

Meanwhile, the Golan Heights has become a convenient shelter for Sunni rebels fighting the Assad regime, including Jihadi groups affiliated to al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. So far, these groups have not attacked Israel, since they have been busy fighting each other. But their presence may represent a growing challenge. Neither Russia nor the US will strike ISIS affiliate Jaysh Khalid ibn al-Waleed (a coalition including the former Liwa Shuhada al-Yarmouk), which is located in the Yarmouk Valley. The fight against those groups is supposed to be the responsibility of the Western and Jordanian-sponsored rebels of the ‘Southern Front’. However, they are currently proving much less efficient than Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and Ahrar al-Sham in containing their expansion. Paradoxically, the presence of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the Golan Heights is not so problematic for Israel, all the more so because they also fight the Syrian regime and Hizbullah. On the jihadi issue, Israel has so far remained discreet, interfering only when direct threats to its security were identified. In June, for example, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck a Jaysh Khalid Ibn al-Waleed surface-to-air defence system. Nobody can predict how long these groups (especially ISIS) will remain close to Israel without attempting any action against it.